The ability of being able to work on the move is increasingly desirable in modern society. This has led to the advent of portable communication devices such as smart phones and tablet computers, which increasingly aim to offer similar functionality as for instance desktop computers, such that users of such portable communication devices are empowered to perform many tasks when away from their desks. For example, in a business environment, entrepreneurs, enterprises or their employees may utilize such portable communication devices for the purpose of offering or conducting commercial transactions independent of their location.
However, portable communication devices typically offer a different type of user interaction compared to, for instance, a desktop computer. Specifically, portable communication devices are typically operated through a touchscreen, rather than a combination of keyboard and mouse for example. This can be detrimental to the user experience when running applications that are optimized for use with such combinations of more traditional user interfaces.
For example, when trying to manipulate tabulated data, e.g. data in a spreadsheet, a user may find such manipulations particularly cumbersome on a touchscreen, as for instance navigation and selection of desired fields in the tabulated data is more involved. Selection of data may require long-pressing a data cell in order to activate the cell selection markers at the edge of the selected data cell, after which the markers need to be dragged over the area of the tabulated data to be selected, for example, in order to facilitate copying of the data. This is rather cumbersome, error-prone and does not allow for selection of non-contiguous data. The selection process of such data is even more involved.
US 2014/0372854 A1 discloses a smart selection engine that may run in the context of a spreadsheet application. The smart selection engine reduces the cognitive load and complexity for performing spreadsheet operations by presenting the user with easy to use and understand options that are big, simple, and lend themselves to natural user interfaces, touch enabled devices, and devices with small displays as well as with graphical user interfaces, larger displays, and traditional input devices. By making contextually based suggestions, the smart selection engine reduces or eliminates the need for the user to be aware of the available operations or how to perform the operations. This solution aids the user in selecting the appropriate data in a spreadsheet for instance. However, it does not necessarily reduce the user interaction required to select the desired data.